5 Movies That Cut Insane Twist Endings at the Last Second

One underappreciated way that DVD (and then the Internet) changed film forever is the availability of deleted scenes. It completely alters your idea of a movie when you see what the creators originally intended.

And in fact, we have established that it's pretty common for movies to have alternate endings, often radically different ones that were cut somewhere between script and release. We'll let you decide whether they would have been an improvement.

At the end of the third Die Hard movie, John McClane tracks down the bad guy, Simon Gruber, and raids his hideout with a bunch of Mounties, and Simon dies in a helicopter explosion while trying to escape. So, it ends like every '90s action movie ever, more or less. After that, the film goes out on a sentimental note as McClane's pal, Zeus L. Carver, convinces McClane to call his estranged wife, Holly, to patch things up.

Here's why the alternate ending included in the Special Edition Die Hard With a Vengeance DVD is superior to the original, in three words: motherfucking rocket launcher.

It's almost like a Tarantino scene, in that it's five solid minutes of two guys talking quietly, followed by one of them killing the other in the most laughable way possible.

It's also much darker than what ended up in the film: First of all, Simon actually gets away with the gold he stole, while McClane is fired from the NYPD and his pension is taken away. Like in the movie, McClane eventually tracks down Simon thanks to a bottle of aspirin Simon had given him earlier; unlike the movie, McClane also brings the aforementioned rocket launcher and insists they play a game of Russian roulette with it. Simon wins, and his prize is a rocket through the chest.

20th Century Fox"All right, let's try best out of three."

So, you see, that's the "vengeance" from the title -- it's not Simon going after McClane for killing his brother two movies ago (he didn't give a shit about that), it's McClane taking his revenge on Simon for ruining his life. Also, this scene takes place on Christmas, McClane's preferred date for killing bad guys, according to the previous installments.

However, according to the DVD commentary from screenwriter Jonathan Hensleigh, the studio felt that this ended the character of John McClane on a bit of a bad note. McClane has killed a lot of dudes over the years, but it's always in self-defense or to prevent them from getting away. In this case, Simon already got away. This would be the first time McClane went out of his way to coldly murder someone, and the studio felt they couldn't allow it.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is the instant cult classic (read: shitty box office but loud fans) by Edgar Wright based on a popular series of graphic novels (read: fat comics). Scott is in love with Amazon.ca delivery girl Ramona Flowers but must fight all seven of her exes in order to be with her, because that's how it works in Canada. In the end, Scott is victorious and finally wins her heart. What kind of movie would it be if he fought all those guys for nothing? Besides, that's how the comic ends.

Universal PicturesAnd they lived happily ever after, assuming that's not a door to the dungeon dimensions.

How It Was Supposed to End:

Instead of Scott and Ramona getting together, Scott was actually going to get back with his disturbingly young ex-girlfriend Knives. On the DVD, an alternate ending can be found that goes pretty much like the theatrical one, except for the minor detail that Scott just stays with Knives while Ramona walks away alone.

So Scott Pilgrim is dating a high schooler, which is exactly where he was in his life when the movie started. Wouldn't that contradict the ending of the comic, though? Yep, but the movie was actually written before the final book in the series was made. Since the creator didn't even know how he was going to finish the story yet, the filmmakers just came up with their own thing. And their own thing, somehow, was "Scott doesn't end up with the girl he fought all those dudes for."

This is the ending that was written, shot, and edited. Another deviation from the comic involved a battle with a giant robot version of Jason Schwartzman, but this was scrapped because they feared it would look too much like Transformers (apparently you saw his robot balls). Edgar Wright discussed in an interview that test screenings did not go well with the original ending, so they reshot it to match the book. This is probably for the best, since the other one would have basically negated all the personal growth Scott had gone through (in this case, represented by a magical purple katana that comes out of his body).

Universal PicturesSymbolizing the time in every young man's life when his penis turns purple and kind of burns.

#3. Chronicle -- Matt Becomes a Real Superhero ... in Korea

20th Century Fox

Chronicle begins just like any other movie about three teenage friends who get superpowers after stepping into a magic cave. Then, in the third act, the movie goes all Man of Steel as the shyest of the group, Andrew, turns into a full-fledged supervillain, and it's up to his pal Matt to stop him. After causing major property damage to the city of Seattle in their fight, Matt has no choice but to kill Andrew and fly away from the police and armed forces closing in on him. At the end of the movie, we see Matt in Tibet, vowing to use his powers for good.

20th Century FoxStarting with some powerfully good yodeling.

How It Was Supposed to End:

In Max Landis' original script, Matt does not fly away after successfully killing Andrew. He passes out and wakes up in a bright white room where soldiers and men in radiation suits surround him. Then he realizes his body is seriously fucked up from the fight and begins freaking out.

What singing, you ask? Why, the singing the boys heard when they first went down into the cave (which was also cut from the movie), of course. Anyway, that's when Matt's body begins healing itself, which according to the script's description would have looked more or less like a deleted scene from The Thing. Matt escapes, not before making a room full of military personnel shit themselves, and we cut to two years later. A dam in Asia breaks and some people are about to get drowned, when suddenly ...

Matt single-handedly stops the giant wave of water with his telekinetic powers and pushes it back into the dam. He's basically Superman with a potty mouth now, or a paler Hancock. It's not clear why the ending was changed, but it may have had something to do with the fact that the movie already had one sequence that cost as much as the rest of the movie combined, so another one would have been a little excessive. Also, why show the character becoming a superhero when you can just have him say to the camera, "Hey, I'm totally gonna become a superhero now, by the way"?

20th Century Fox"Also I'm going to do a lot of expensive-looking stuff you'll never see!"

So what are the chances of Max Landis' Super-Matt and his rhyming "FUCK YEAH KOREA" catchphrase showing up in the inevitable sequel? Not many, since Landis got canned.